ANDREA IANNONE SECOND QUICKEST ON OPENING DAY

• Iannone 2nd with promising early pace.
• Alex Rins hampered by a late crash.
• Sylvain Guintoli re-familiarising himself with GSX-RR.

Friday morning at Montmelo brought the anticipated sunny skies and warm temperatures, making for a pleasant start to proceedings. The Catalan track has been recently resurfaced and the riders used some of FP1 to get a feel for the new asphalt as well as the modified layout.

Andrea Iannone began FP1 with strong pace but the Italian suffered a very small crash at the tricky Turn 10 with 35 minutes left of the session - although he quickly rejoined and fought back by taking 2nd place with a 1:40.274. As the session drew on the riders switched their focus to set-up and tyres, and were shuffled down the order as the chequered flag came out.

In the afternoon’s FP2 session both the pace and the weather hotted up, Alex Rins and Andrea Iannone started strongly and kept their lap times close to the top of the sheet, with Iannone around half a second off. Towards the end of the session, as the riders made their final push, there were a few crashes. Unfortunately Alex Rins was one of these; although the Spaniard was thankfully uninjured. Iannone, however, was able to set an excellent time to bring himself up to 2nd place, just +0.107 from the fastest rider. He also topped sector 3, and was 2nd quickest through sectors 2 and 4.

Sylvain Guintoli, who is re-familiarising himself with the GSX-RR, used all of Day 1 to focus on adjustments.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager
“It’s been a ‘working Friday’! In the end Andrea was able to make a very good lap time during his time attack and his pace was good. But we also used the session to try different tyres and work for the race, and now we have some information for tomorrow. Alex also worked on settings and tyres for the race, and he didn’t try a time attack, which is why he’s quite far down. The important thing is that we got good information today and tomorrow morning we’ll try to capitalise on the work we did today and stay within the Top 10.”

Andrea Iannone
“It has been a positive day for us for sure, and I have a good feeling with my bike on this track, and during the test we worked really well which helped. This morning and this afternoon, at the beginning of the sessions, we tried a few different tyre configurations including the hard front and rear. In the end we have finished today with good lap times, we’ve improved a lot, and both me and the team have a really good feeling. It’s important to continue like this and try to improve a little bit more tomorrow, especially on the braking points.”

Alex Rins
“Today was a very important and positive day because we could work in a good way. The asphalt of the track and the layout is new and also when you go a bit wide in some corners it seems a bit dirty and the bike starts to slide, but it’s the same for everybody. Overall we did good work today with used tyres and this morning and in the afternoon we did a great job with the pace. Now it’s time to check the new tyre to try to achieve the first objective and entry into Q2.”

Sylvain Guintoli
“Today was OK, we’re much closer than last year in terms of Day 1. Today we had some parts to assess so I haven’t really had a go at a time attack yet or used the soft tyre. It’s going well and I’m enjoying it, I hope tomorrow we can find more pace with the soft tyres and get more speed. The test we had here helped a lot, especially in terms of the new surface and the layout - the new tarmac has fewer bumps and I prefer this layout as it’s much safer and also more enjoyable.”